


to sleep: perchance to dream

by avekatanas



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Fix-It, Gay Richie Tozier, M/M, Memory Loss, Rating May Change, Reunions, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 19:51:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20569940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avekatanas/pseuds/avekatanas
Summary: The year is 2000, 11 years after-After what?





	1. dawn

The morning light streams through the open window and washes over the bed in golden waves, stripes through the narrow slats of the blinds. Richie, just inches away from the boy’s face, takes in every part of him— His long lashes, tiny freckles that are only visible from this close, the golden shine of his eyes as they catch the sunlight. Richie is wearing only a pair of sweatpants, and the boy an oversized shirt, probably one of his own, and boxers. His fingertips graze over Richie’s bare chest and it feels like sparks jumping beneath his skin.

As they stare into each other, the sounds of birds and early risers outside sound faded, as if underwater. There’s a vague feeling in the air that they have somewhere to be soon, and they’re dragging this moment out as long as they can. The boy quirks an eyebrow and says something about toothpaste, but it comes out sounding distant and distorted. Richie blows morning breath in the boy’s face and he gags dramatically. The bedsheets are growing cold and wet.

The temperature shock from the warm blanket of sun jolts Richie up, and he realizes the room is quickly filling with murky water. His now soaking sweats feeling heavier than they should, Richie stands on top of the bed and tries to pull the still reclining boy up, who remains lying on his side and simply looks at him strangely as his body is overtaken by the flood.

* * *

Richie Tozier wakes alone and sits up with a start that he quickly shakes off. He brushes his teeth, asks himself if he has time to shower (he doesn’t), grabs a spoonful of peanut butter for breakfast, waves good morning to his roommate, and hurries to his appointment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has been in the works for a LONG time and with the release of chapter 2 I think we all need some happy, healthy reddie, don't you?
> 
> Questions? Prompts? Hmu @reddieofficial on tumblr!


	2. write it down

“Have I told you I’ve never dreamt before?”

  
Dr. Aizawa tilted her head in interest. “I don’t think you have. Never?”

  
“Well,” Richie rubbed the back of his neck, grazing his fingers over his shaved undercut. He had impulsively chopped most of his childhood mop off a few months after he moved to California and decided he liked it better short. And there it was again, that tickling in the back of his mind that led him to a psychiatrist’s office in the first place. What was it about his hair that made his mind lead him to some kind of dam? “Not exactly never. But not since I was a kid, y’know?”

  
The doctor hummed in acknowledgement. “Would you say you stopped dreaming around when your memory blanks start appearing?”

Richie nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yeah. I’m positive. Like, I’m sure they’re connected but that’s—That’s not why I brought it up.”

  
“So why did you bring it up?”  
“Because last night, for the first time in years, I dreamt. And it was crazy vivid. Like, I don’t even think real life is that vivid. I could see and feel and, god, it was insane! The only thing I had trouble with was hearing.” Richie started absentmindedly picking at a hole in his jeans.

  
“Can you tell me about the dream?” Dr. Aizawa pulled out a notepad and pen. “And do you mind if I take a few notes?”

  
“Please do.” Richie had asked the psychiatrist to take more notes a few sessions ago. He knew it probably wasn’t efficient to write everything down, but all Richie cared about was that the paper existed. Writing things down was good. It made things concrete. Physical. Notes wouldn’t fade away or slip through the cracks in his mind. At her suggestion, he’d even started keeping his own personal journal for every time something tickled his mind, hoping to find a pattern (he would have to write that hair thing down when he got home).

  
As he spoke, the scratching of pen on the notepad began. “It was me and this kid. We were both kids, I mean. More like teenagers I guess, but couldn’t have been older than 16. We were just lying in bed together in the morning. We must have spent the night together. And this boy, god. I know I have memory issues, but I don’t think I could ever forget his face. Not after that. Everything was so happy and calm. And I felt safe, safer than I’ve felt in years, and I think it was because of him. But all of a sudden, the room started flooding, and I was-” Richie took a deep breath. He always forgot to breathe when he was rambling. “I was trying to tell him to get up because he was going to drown but he just. Let the water take him. And then I woke up.”

  
“Is this boy familiar to you?”

  
Richie squeezed his eyes shut for a moment in thought. He hated pushing his memory like this, because it always frustrated him, but he tried anyway. But of course, as he waded through the distorted names, faces, and scenes of his teenage years he ran up against the inevitable wall that stopped him from going any further than skimming the surface. Richie felt a lump form in his throat, and he briefly wondered if he even had the energy to be pissed off over his shit garbage memory or if he would just skip to crying.

  
Today it was the latter.

  
Dr. Aizawa handed him the tissue box from her desk and looked at him with sympathy. Richie accepted it gratefully, removing his glasses to dab at his nose and eyes. “I- I don’t know… That block is always there and no matter how hard I try I can’t get past it. It’s so—so frustrating!”

  
The doctor nodded. “You’re a very determined person Richard. This might feel like an unstoppable force versus an immovable object, and your drive makes it particularly frustrating not to get immediate results despite putting so much of yourself into it, but that drive is what’s going to help you the most in getting over the wall.”

  
From his appointment, Richie took a bus home to shower (finally) and rest briefly before his graveyard shift at the nearby diner. He worked as a line cook at night, and a few days a week he was a board operator at a local radio station in the mornings. The former was particularly soul-sucking, making the same mediocre diner fare speedily and somewhat shoddily for a late crowd that consisted primarily of stoners, drunks, and groups of rowdy teenagers out past curfew.

  
Sure enough, the otherwise slow diner reached peak occupancy that night with two college students that were poorly concealing the fact that they were high as kites, and some kids that had pushed two tables together for everyone to sit at and were laughing over their sundaes. One of them was stacking tiny plastic cups of cream into a little pyramid on the table while another watched and occasionally nudged a cup to help balance it. If Richie wasn’t so nervous he would have to clean it up when the tower fell apart, he would actually be impressed with how large the pyramid was getting.  
As he wiped down a counter, he heard the boy stacking the cups give an impressed whistle. “Well I’ll be damned. This is almost as big as my dick.” Richie repressed a snort of laughter as he heard another kid whisper dude don’t say that so loud!

  
“So, about this big?” Richie caught a glimpse of the boy that was balancing the tower pluck a single creamer off the top and present it with a smirk.  
Richie was no stranger to a good dick joke, but something about those kids made his stomach twist a bit. His journal was getting some good use tonight, that was for sure. He sighed and checked the clock, thankful that they would be closing up soon so today could be over as quickly as possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions? Prompts? Hmu @reddieofficial on tumblr!


	3. dawn ii

The boy with the messy hair thinks he’s a better guitar player than he is. Either that or he knows he’s not the best and he’s fine with it. Either way, Eddie finds it difficult to care when the boy sings out to him with an endearing rasp. It’s hard to hear, but Eddie watches his face and the way his mouth wraps around the lyrics intently. He can’t look away. His hands are littered with paper cuts poorly covered by peeling band-aids and sharpie-d on swirls and stars that climb up his wrists onto his arms. His nails were once painted black by precise hands, but he’s chipped most of it off. Bad habit.

His glasses are slipping down his nose but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. The window is ajar and a warm summer breeze ruffles Eddie’s hair, but he’s too enraptured in the boy to preen himself. Eddie slowly reaches out to adjust his glasses for him, but snatches them away at the last second with a laugh. The guitar is quickly cast aside in favor of play wrestling on Eddie’s bed for the frames, and the beaming smile that spreads across the boy’s face makes Eddie’s heart skip a beat.

But the smile fades. The boy’s arms buckle and he collapses on top of him. The weight is so much, so heavy, and Eddie’s breathing is becoming short. He turns his head to the bedside table, tries to reach out for his inhaler, but his arms are pinned down with the rest of them. He can’t breathe. _He can’t fucking breathe._

* * *

The screech of an alarm clock in Eddies right ear jolts him awake, and the immediate harmonizing complaints about the noise in his left make him ask himself what kind of omen this is for the week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions? Prompts? Hmu @reddieofficial on tumblr!


	4. nate

Gingerly, Eddie untangled himself from hairy limbs and woke himself up with a shower. After drying off, he opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed his hair mousse and anxiety medication. He paused for a moment before opening the prescription bottle, trying to recall if he already took them before he got in the shower. He knew he should get a pill organizer, but they reminded him too much of his mother. He hadn’t used one in over a decade. Not since—

Since what?

Eddie swallowed his medication dry and rushed the rest of his routine, not even bothering to grab breakfast before heading to the door and pausing.

“Nate, where are my keys?”

Nathan, who had migrated from the bedroom to the kitchen to get cereal, pushed some dark hair out of his face and responded without facing Eddie. “On the hook, dipshit.”

They were not on the hook, dipshit.

When he and Nate first met, Eddie was completely infatuated with him. He was your quintessential tall, dark and handsome, with an athletic physique and a smirk that would make any guy weak in the knees. As they talked more and more, he fell for his sense of humor and gregarious personality. Eddie could just listen to him talk for hours and stay completely engaged. Nothing made him more comfortable than sitting back and listening to someone ramble about nothing. It was like they were old friends.

That all changed when Nate moved in.

As he would often assert, Eddie was not a child anymore. After settling in New York, he proceeded to quickly settle into himself. To Eddie, that meant throwing out everything that still reminded him of his mother. It meant going to his first Pride parade and finally understanding what they really meant by _pride. _He made friends there—friends like him, who understood him, who didn’t judge him but instead nodded in solidarity when he confessed he never told his mother his new address.

And, of course, it meant dating. Considering he could count the number of other boys like him in Derry on one hand, he remained the only single one in his childhood friend group throughout his teenage years. At least he assumed so. It wasn’t like he remembered much from that part of his life anyway (Which was probably normal, right? Definitely. Definitely normal). In New York he finally got the chance to gain some experience with men. Fully blossomed from his awkward 18-year-old self, he now considered himself an expert at flirting with _men_, dating _men_, and taking _men_ home if it so suited him. Because he wasn’t a damn kid anymore and nobody was there to tell him no.

Yet in all his years, he had never dated someone so utterly _inconsiderate._ Nathan was afflicted with a short-term memory loss that only seemed to activate when Eddie asked him do chores, and a penchant for constant badly timed jokes that ranged from tasteless to horribly offensive. It was enough to put a fissure in any relationship.

Eddie clenched his jaw slightly. “Nate, I’m serious. Where did you hide my keys? I’ve been looking forward to this for months and first impressions are everything! You _know_ I can’t afford to be late.”

“Quit being paranoid! I didn’t touch your stupid keys!”

“_Nathan!_”

Nate tossed his head back and groaned loudly. Then he reached into the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter and pulled out a red keychain. He readied himself to toss them and Eddie glared and held out his hand in a _get over here and hand them to me like a normal fucking person for once_ gesture. Nate groaned again and walked over, drawing himself up to a broad-shouldered six feet tall and looming over Eddie before unceremoniously dropping the house keys in his hand.

“Learn to take a joke, princess. Goddamn.” Eddie turned to leave. “What, no kiss goodbye, Eds?”

Eddie took note to apologize to his dentist for gritting his teeth so much. Being called that made him want to be sick. He could already feel the migraine coming on. He huffed and stood up on his toes to kiss Nate. It was quick, stiff, and as Nate attempted to pull him in for something more Eddie turned on his heel and shook him off. Nate hadn’t brushed his teeth yet.

On the bus to his clerkship, Eddie asked himself what he so often asked these days. Why does he stay like this? It should be so simple, so easy to just kick Nathan’s sorry ass to the curb and never look back. It should be. So why wasn’t it?

Eddie found himself humming the tune he heard in his dream. Somehow, he knew it by heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions? Prompts? Hmu @reddieofficial on tumblr!


End file.
